


Ancients

by purglepurglepurgle



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Angst, Colonization, Despair, Objectification, Shinra Electric Power Company Science Department, and the most unpleasant, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:20:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25811965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purglepurglepurgle/pseuds/purglepurglepurgle
Summary: Ifalna, in the Shinra building. Darkfic, angst.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough & Ifalna, Gast Faremis/Ifalna, Ifalna & Jenova, Ifalna & Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII), Ifalna & Shinra
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	Ancients

"There's a good chance I'm an Ancient myself, you know." President Shinra's moustache gleamed yellow, newly dyed.

"Mmhmm?" Ifalna forced a smile.

His hand was tight around her wrist.

"I've always felt I was different. Special, in some way. Shinras... we're not like other men."

"Definitely not," said Ifalna.

The President leaned closer, breath in her face. "I think, on some level, I've always felt a bond with the planet. Deep inside me, very deep; I'd go so far as to say it's a matter of souls, though I don't want you repeating that outside this room. I've got a business to run. But from one Ancient to another, I think that's why I feel such a pull-- a primordial pull, you know? Real powerful stuff-- that pull toward mako, that drive to extract and refine it, get right in there-- the planet’s calling to me, sharing its secrets. Wants me to split it open, scoop out the good stuff. It’s destiny, I think. Does that sound familiar to you?"

"I can't say it does," said Ifalna.

The President’s nails dug in harder, hairs thick on the back of his arm. "My father's father-- educated man, very educated-- he'd looked into it a bit. Shinras, we've always been different, special intuition, special connection. _He_ believed we were descended from one of the Ancient Mideelan tribes, 5th century or so. We can trace the lineage right back, I can show you-- though of course, that only tells us the names. But it seems like the stuff. Would explain how we came to be where we are in the world. A little magic never hurt anyone, eh?"

"I thought you made your money selling weapons?" said Ifalna.

*

Later that evening, wrist bruised, she braided Aeris' hair, so her daughter could sleep without it tangling. Ifalna had considered pretending this was a Cetra ritual and not just common sense, so that it made it into the books; she liked the idea of sabotaging Shinra's research. On the other hand, their research was the only record that other people could read. She'd been intending to make a trip with Gast, to catalogue the contents of the spheres in the Last Cetra City (and then maybe make a pilgrimage to the temple, far in the South, to see if the stories were true), but... she'd missed the chance. And now, she couldn't let Shinra know about the records; they'd rip them out of place and shove them into plastic cases, congratulating themselves for their preservation-efforts as they destroyed thousands of years of history. But that did mean the knowledge might be lost for good.

_\--Let them lose it, we owe them nothing.--_

_\--All our history, gone...--_

_\--The planet remembers.--_

That kept her going. Within the Shinra building, the connection was always muted; nothing _grew_ \-- but there was a continuity, faint, pulsing under the surface. And sometimes there were whispers in the air, a slight electric charge. These things didn't just die. If people could make the spheres once, then one day, someone, somewhere, could decipher them, if they truly cared.

_Except, how is that going to happen? When Shinra use my cells to create one of their monsters?_

Well, the physical could be cloned. She doubted Shinra would manage it; they would probably just create horrors-- but it could, theoretically, be done. But as for the knowledge in the spheres, Shinra would only ever slide over the surface. They could study for a thousand years without understanding. The Cetra words were not _for_ them.

And they would never be.

Shinra wasn't the sort of thing that could understand. To Shinra, Ifalna was a collection of bodyparts and interesting genetic code, that could be deconstructed, sampled and replicated at will. Shinra were confident they could plunder the bits they liked and discard the rest, and that anything they didn't understand was unnecessary. Ifalna herself was some sort of inconvenient coincidence, if she existed at all. The important parts were those that could be seen from the outside; seen, and recorded in inaccurate detail, by Shinra men. Far more people had written books on Ifalna than had ever met Ifalna, and those who _did_ meet her tended not to listen. Especially when she said things that didn't fit with their theories.

Shinra had a lot of theories on Ancients, and the Promised Land.

She had kept the white materia, disguising it as a jewel. There was no way it could be materia, because everyone knew that materia only came in five colours, and the scientists looked no closer; they were a lot more interested in her anatomy than they were in her personal tastes. Every time she thought they'd taken every possible measurement, they found another they couldn't do without. Size; volume; they seemed very very interested in the specific dimensions of Cetra breasts. She was definitely a woman, though scientific opinion was split on whether she was human.

_"Do Ancients have the same emotions? She seems a bit cold."_

_"Does it hurt when I pinch, yes or no?"_

_"What about the sexual response? It seems oddly muted compared to controls. Have we checked her testosterone?"_

They had hoped to _breed_ her, but unfortunately for them, she'd nearly died giving birth to Aeris and now 'certain important components were absent', as the Shinra scientists put it. So that was something.

Though it meant they would want Aeris soon.

There were days she just cried. Aeris needed her, so she tried to keep going-- and she didn't want to give the scientists the sense of power; some of them liked to see her cry-- but the thought of her girl, stuck in this building from before she was even a month old, subjected to _this,_ yet another link in the long chain of suffering ever since the Calamity From the Skies-- without even the freedom to choose to be the last. While Shinra took and catalogued Ifalna's old tapestries and complained about the place her husband had bled out over the fabric and they gave their lectures on the promised land and explained the inner workings of the Ancient psyche and told her she should be grateful for an audience with the president as her husband lay somewhere alone under six feet of snow

Ifalna bit back another sob.

_"Why cry, Ifalna? We're building something incredible! You've seen the boy?"_

Yes, she'd seen the boy.

_"We're making an Ancient of our very own! Shinra always does it better, you'll see. He'll be faster, and stronger, like nothing you've ever seen before: the ultimate soldier! A New Ancient, the first in two thousand years!"_

White hair, eyes that reflected more light than they should, a thin face and fingernails that grew too long, too fast. Her body froze whenever she caught sight of him; every cell screamed _predator_ , _calamity calamity calamity_. She thought of the caves to the North, translucent spiders, legs like scythes. She would press herself to the wall, rocks grinding against rocks on a frequency only she could hear.

And Aeris would be his.

_Is this my fault? Is this my punishment for not stopping them?_

Shinra had been unable to replicate Gast's work. During that project, she hadn't known the details, but she'd known enough to feel unease, sharpening to panic when she'd finally learned, too late to change a thing. And she knew she could have learned more at any point. She knew she'd chosen not to look.

But if this was her punishment, why drag Aeris into it too?

 _\--The calamity follows from land to land; it will always follow and you will never be safe. It destroys what we build and then it eats us. Did you think you were different? Did you think you could escape? Did you think your daughter would be_ _**special**_ _?--_

The voices blurred together; her mother and grandmother might have been in there somewhere, though they tended to be gentler with her. Softer, sadder. She'd been naive, but she was still theirs, and they, too, had once hoped for better things. It didn't much matter. There was no point cursing her arrogance; there was only the here and now, the cold lab floor and her daughter, and they had to get out before Shinra could create more of them. Get out, or die trying. Her promised land.


End file.
